Ken Osmond on AllMovie

Supporting actor Ken Osmond is best remembered for playing Wally Cleaver's oily, conniving best friend Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963), a role he has periodically capitalized on in films and subsequent incarnations of the ever-popular series. Prior to getting that role, Osmond -- usually billed as Kenneth Osmond -- was already a busy child actor, playing supporting parts in such big-budget Warner Bros. films as So Big (his big-screen debut) at age eight. He made the rounds of the studios, appearing in Fox's tear-jerker Good Morning, Miss Dove in 1955, as well as the comedy Everything But the Truth at Universal in 1956. It was a year later that he took on the part of Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver, which was produced by Universal's television unit. Osmond's work as Eddie earned him a Youth In Films Lifetime Achievement Award. Following the show's cancellation, Osmond did occasional television work, turning up in one episode of The Munsters (playing -- surprise! -- a troublemaking student) and elsewhere on the small screen, as well as in Paramount's 1967 college campus exploitation drama C'mon, Let's Live a Little, before he left acting. Osmond and his brother founded a charter helicopter company, and he later spent 18 years as a Los Angeles police officer. After sustaining multiple gunshot wounds during an attempted arrest, Osmond had to retire. In 1983, he returned to acting and Eddie Haskell, in The New Leave It to Beaver. The show ran until 1989 and featured his real sons, Eric and Christian Osmond, playing Eddie's sons Freddie and Boomer. In 1997, Osmond again showed up as Eddie in a cameo role in the feature-film version of Leave It to Beaver.